SPARC’s teachers and technicians engage students through virtual classes. (Photo by Liz Earnest)
Before the pandemic, every year, 3,000 children and teens passed through the 14,000-foot facility on Hamilton Avenue that houses SPARC (School of the Performing Arts in the Richmond Community). Heartbreak followed when restrictions caused by the pandemic grounded many of the school’s activities.
“Pre-COVID, we were operating at full steam all the time,” says Liz Earnest, SPARC’s education coordinator. “It’s not an exaggeration to say that every week, we had some sort of a big performance, program or major opportunity for our students happening throughout the course of any particular season.”
The school was six shows into an eight-show production season in 2020. They also work with students in Richmond and Henrico County schools through their “Stages” program, while their summer camp serves almost 1,000 students each year. It all ground to a halt when SPARC shut its doors in March 2020. But it didn’t take long for organizers to find a way for the 40-year-old organization to continue its mission of influencing young people’s lives through performing arts education.
By the spring, the staff discovered how to lead at-home activities, story times, vocal workshops, mindfulness techniques and improv dance sessions through social media. In the summer, via videoconferencing, SPARC produced its New Voices for the Theater Virtual Festival of New Work, as well as online classes. Members of a SPARC teen leadership program produced fundraising videos for a new outdoor facility and shared how the organization has shaped them. In the winter, SPARC gained a rhythm while pivoting to virtual classes and socially distanced programming that included technical theater classes and drop-in Saturday workshops.
“Students are in their kitchens, in their bedrooms, dancing and singing and playing games with their peers in very much the same way that they would have done if they could join us at SPARC,” Earnest says.
The school that now includes classes, an LGBTQ teen troupe, summer camps, technical theater workshops and a touring ensemble has also made arrangements for safer instruction at SPARC. The Bill Talley Ford Outdoor Classroom, installed in October, is a 24-by-66-foot structure that can hold up to 26 students and teachers while allowing them to keep a safe distance from each other.
“By building this outdoor classroom, we’ve given our students a really wonderful environment where they can gather safely and comfortably throughout the course of the seasons with lighting and some heating elements … to make sure that they can still have classes regularly outdoors,” Earnest says.
The school’s work to continue its mission hasn’t gone unnoticed. Megan Heaslip Blake’s 14-year-old daughter, Katie, who has Down syndrome, attends performing arts classes at the school. “We’re just so appreciative that they’ve made an effort to keep it going,” Heaslip Blake says. “We’re just really, really grateful that it continues to be a part of our lives. And especially now, with virtual schooling and being home all day with really limited social opportunities, [SPARC] is an even brighter light in these long, long weeks of virtual schooling.”
The school plans to resume its summer camp later this year, and registration began last month. Spring training classes and virtual options continue as well, with the teen troupe holding rehearsals as it prepares to record an adaptation of the Alfred Hitchcock film “The 39 Steps” to air on VPM radio in June.
